Just finished reading, and then re-reading Dragonfly by Frederic S. Durbin. (Yes. It's that good.)

If you like books like Ray Bradbury's October Country, The Halloween Tree, or Something Wicked This Way Comes (all highly recommended BTW) you'll enjoy this book too. It's the quintessential Halloween story narrated by a young "10 going on 11" girl named Bridget-Anne - although everybody calls her Dragonfly.

This book ended up being a complete surprise. What at first seems to be your basic supernatural "save the world" adventure ends up being a very unusual and poignant coming of age story. Well worth a read although you might want to save it for Halloween week in order to get yourself immersed in the full atmosphere of the story.

(Note: with thanks to M.M. who recommended it and is my adviser on all things related to YA fiction.)

I can't remember if I mentioned this already or not, but I recently read the Hunger Games trilogy. I think it was back in January when I read them.

I loved the first book so much that I pretty much read it and the following two books in a single sitting. There may have been a bathroom or food break somewhere in there, but other than that I did nothing but read those three books from start to finish.

The first book was the best. The second book surprised me but made me like the protagonist a bit less. The third book was the worst, IMO, mostly because:

minor spoiler

in that book the protagonist was almost completely unlike how she was in the first book.

This is a short novel spin-off from the anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

I'm not normally inclined to read books based on movies or TV series. But this short novel hit all the right notes and actually made the anime series more interesting while remaining a good little book in it's own right. Not a bad accomplishment considering GIS is one of the better post-cyberpunk franchises out there.

The setting for most of the Ghost in the Shell stories is a big sprawling neo-Tokyo where cybernetic implants and brain alterations are the norm. It's a fairly complex story that isn't easily summarized, although the predominant themes center on what it means to be alive, "truly human" - and what constitutes what we accept as 'reality.'

The treatment throughout Ghost in the Shell is very adult, and lacks most , but not always all (in the TV series) of the cutesy adolescent elements that occupy center stage in so many of these types of stories coming out of Japan.

Here's the capsule summary of the plot from the publisher.

Quote

Since being formed as a shadow peacekeeping organization, Section 9 has faced almost countless adversaries both in the real world and in cyberspace, but none like "The Awakened," a group of terrorists who seem to have the ability to take over the minds and bodies of almost anyone and use them to commit crimes against the state, leaving their pawns unaware of who was controlling them. When Major Motoko Kusanagi is able to capture one of the boys used as a pawn she hacks into his cyberbrain to find out who the ringleader is, but what she discovers will take her and the operatives of Section 9 on a journey deep into the heart of cyberspace, and the answers she finds will shake Section 9 to its core.

Very well done. And even more amazing, that it survived translation.

About $9 in bookstores (if there are any still left where you live) or from Amazon for...hmm...the same price! What's going on here?

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Note: If you're new to Ghost in the Shell, I'd suggest possibly viewing some of the anime before plunging into the book. Especially if you don't have much experience with this genre. The best are the three feature-length animations Ghost in the Shell and it's quasi-sequels Ghost in the Shell2: Innocence and Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society - which is the lead-in for the subsequent Stand Alone Complex series.

What books are you reading?What books are you reading?What books are you reading?

Just finished "Mortal Engines," by Philip Reeve.Far-future science fiction? For children/young adults? This one is great. It deserves all the prizes awarded to it. Adventure, energy, betrayal, revenge, romance, loyalty, engaging characters, a complicated villain, an unexpected denouement. I couldn't put it down, and immediately requested the next in the quartet from the library.

Ha! I just dropped in here to recommend Arnaldur Indridason (I'm working through the Erlendur series) an see that rjbull has beaten me to it. I'm currently reading "Arctic Chill" (book number 4) and am very impressed with Indridason's plot development and "mood".

"Some people have a way with words, other people,... oh... have not way" - Steve Martin

Ha! I just dropped in here to recommend Arnaldur Indridason (I'm working through the Erlendur series) an see that rjbull has beaten me to it. I'm currently reading "Arctic Chill" (book number 4) and am very impressed with Indridason's plot development and "mood".

It's a great series, and from the little I know of Iceland (I visited years ago on photographic holidays, and read a bit about it), the backdrop of the merciless landscape is exactly right. Indridason had me worried with Outrage, the 7th in the series, in which Erlendur ominously doesn't feature, but I see there's now an eighth, Black Skies, to be published this June.

Not sure what it is with Scandinavian thriller writers, especially Jo Nesbo and Hakan Nesser. Is everybody up there really so polite? I mean, the detectives go to someone's house to interview them about a murder, but nothing can be done until they've all sat down and had a cup of coffee and a piece of cake!

My ISP is broadcasting now the season 2 of the HBO TV show made after the series, but I doubt I'll be able to catch up... I am still in the part where Jon is staring is "job" at the wall....

For the record, the HBO series is really well done and my wife and I both enjoy it (she hasn't read the books). As an aside, I'm hoping Martin lasts long enough to finish out the written series. It's somewhat frustrating when you invest several thousand pages worth of time into a series that doesn't get finished.